VIDEO | Brussels Briefing on Trade – All you need to know for 1-31 December 2016

In the latest Brussels Briefing on Trade, Joanna Sopinska – Trade Editor of EU Trade Insights, provides an overview of the EU’s most pressing trade issues coming up in December 2016.

The European Parliament will hold a consent vote, on 1 December in Brussels, on the EU-Ghana Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

On 2 December, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will talk CETA – the EU-Canada free trade agreement – at a high-level roundtable to take place on the sidelines of the ALDE Party Congress in Warsaw.

On the following day, Commissioner Malmström will move to Geneva to take part on 3-4 December in the Ministerial meeting on the Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) with the aim of sealing a political deal with the other 16 WTO members involved in the negotiations, including China, the US, Canada and Turkey.

The agenda of the European Parliament’s INTA Committee meeting on 5 December will not feature the consent vote on the EU-Canada free trade agreement (CETA) as earlier planed as the political group coordinators decided to postpone it to 24 January 2017.

On 6 December, the Chief negotiators for the Trade in Services Agreement will kick-off two-day technical talks in Geneva.

The European Parliament will take stock, on 13 December, of the progress achieved by the Slovak Presidency over last six months, including in the area of trade policy.

On 14 December, the European Parliament plenary will hold a consent vote on the protocol of accession of Ecuador to the EU-Columbia and Peru free trade agreement. MEPs will also take a stance on the inclusion of a bilateral safeguard clause and on the stabilisation mechanism for bananas in the FTA between the EU, Colombia and Peru.

In the week of 19 December, a WTO panel is expected to issue on a confidential basis its final ruling on US compliance in the Boeing case that was launched by the EU in 2004.